This project is aimed at a better understanding of the manner in which people verbalize experience. We take as a starting point the observation that people are constantly witnessing or participating in situations and events, some of which they subsequently describe to other people by means of language. We are interested in the nature of memory for experiences, and the verbalization process by which they are "turned into words". We hope to find evidence for or against the hypothesis that human knowledge is of two mutually supportive but distinct kinds, which we will label "experiential" and "formal". At the outset we will assume that this dichotomy is valid, and that speaking consists to a significant extent of converting experiential knowledge into formal knowledge before it can be directly verbalized. Our chief method of investigation will be through the presentation of controlled vicarious experiences in the form of relatively brief films, with verbalizations then elicited after varying intervals of time. We also hope to utilize inputs which are actual experiences. The data thus obtained will be both comparative (from different persons at the same time) and longitudinal (from the same person at different times). We plan also to compare verbalizations across selected cultural and subcultural boundaries. We will be working towards a refined model of verbalization processes which has strong empirical support, and looking for more solid answers to questions such as whether the experiential-formal dstinction is viable, how people organize concepts prior to verbalization, how salience and codability affect verbalization and how each can be measured, the nature of individual differences and cultural differences with respect to verbalizations of the same material, and how stored knowledge is changed in the course of time.